[Dovecot] Login processes in Dovecot

[Bruce Bodger]

On Jun 8, 2009, at 3:35 PM, Scott Haneda wrote:

>>> I will be deploying Dovecot on OS X shortly.  I am looking for  
>>> clarification on the limits imposed by OS X and sysctl  
>>> [kern.maxproc].  I understand that it is defaulting to 532, but  
>>> can be raised to 2500.  I believe the OS uses around 100 or so,  
>>> plus I will have other processes and shells at times.
>>
>> Which version of OS X?  10.4 or 10.5 ?  Server or client ?   It  
>> matters.
>
> My current target for deployment is a Dual 2.0 PPC G5, running OS X  
> 10.5 client.  Thank you.

 From http://www.postfix.org/TUNING_README.html#proc_limit

I would presume relevant to Dovecot as well:

===

Tuning the number of processes on the system

       MacOS X will run out of process slots when you increase  
Postfix process limits. The following works with OSX 10.4 and OSX 10.5.

       MacOS X kernel parameters can be specified in /etc/sysctl.conf.

       /etc/sysctl.conf:
           kern.maxproc=2048
           kern.maxprocperuid=2048

       Unfortunately these can't simply be set on the fly with  
"sysctl -w". You also have to set the following in /etc/launchd.conf  
so that the root user after boot will have the right process limit  
(2048). Otherwise you have to always run ulimit -u 2048 as root, then  
start a user shell, and then start processes for things to take effect.

       /etc/launchd.conf:
           limit maxproc 2048

       Once these are in place, reboot the system. After that, the  
limits will stay in place.

Hope it helps,

B. Bodger